I have not touched the nightlies, but I've put in countless hours into this game and the one thing that has me for a loss is "what to do now" It seems that in many of the survival/building/exploring games you reach a point where you've crafted all the best gear, found all the best weapons, built your fortress/planet and you've hit a plateau where there's not much else to do (besides start anew). I was thinking of a few scenario/events that might help provide something challenging that will keep people's interests at that point: Scenario 1 - The Planet Eater At some late-in-the-game period, the event is triggered. A communication comes into your ship from a distant outpost, it's a distress beacon claiming the planet is under attack. The player is given an opportunity to investigate (if ignored, the another one comes in from another neighboring location at another random time). Upon investigating, you find the planet partially destroyed (or maybe missing altogether). This breaks out into an all out frenzy as you find out the culprit of the attack is a planet-sized creature which is going system-to-system devouring worlds. The player(s) then have to chase this creature, land on it (it is the size of a planet after all) and attempt to destroy it. Destroying it involves digging into the planet sized creature and navigating its insides trying to find key structures (generators, specific organs, the brain, etc) and dispose of them. The organism is not without it's own defenses as it's immune systems attack any foreign organisms, sending random creature-like mobs after the players. To make matters worse, the planet-killer is always on the move so if the players die (which they will), they get teleported back to their ship, and likely that ship is still orbiting whatever non-existent location/planet the creature was at prior. This could be a very harrowing endgame event that would require the community to come together to take down the threat. There would also be a sense of urgency as your planets/homeworlds would not be protected from the catastrophe. Scenario 2 - The Bounty Hunters Currently ingame there are factions of cultists that you can run into on different planets. What if hunting them would trigger an event where they hire bounty hunters to scour the universe for you and hunt you down? What if those bounty hunters could attack/damage your ship? What if they could chase you in warp? I think that would add a bit of spice to the game, a whole action/consequence layer that doesn't really exist. The idea would be that they'd capture you and imprison you (if you cannot fight off their attacks). When imprisoned, you'd be stripped of everything and have to battle your way out of their fortress (or preferably a giant battleship of some sort). Scenario 3 - The Nemesis A force in the universe is working against the player, preventing your progress, thwarting your deeds. It seems that one of those random NPC's you slaughtered was someone significant to this Nemesis and he/she wants to exact his revenge. The Nemesis is a patient one though, they've waited till the player thought all was good, that they were untouchable. Events start happening randomly... One day you head to your home base and everything seems fine, except a chest/locker has been cleared out... Next day, your NPC's go missing... Then maybe some buildings you've made are attacked and destroyed... Next you find that the navigation system of your ship has been hacked and a sector is no longer accessible... Slowly but surely the Nemesis is attacking and undoing everything you've done... Finally either through some discovery of clues you track down your Nemesis and engage in an epic battle which will take everything you've got.
suggestion for this, er suggestion: Scenario 4 - The Experiment Each time you find a Apex research station you find some guys in a capsule, well what if all of the capsules there were full except one, and next to it is a container and in it is a lore text by the name of "Suitable test subjects". Inside it reads: "there has been a lot of extra subjects as big ape wants more results, but we are one subject short. So we have made this list of people (apex or not) that might be good subjects. *Random Apex name* *Random Apex name* *Random Apex name* *Random Apex name* *PLAYER NAME* High priority (end of text) So as you get home some miniknog raids start and their strength and numbers rises as time goes by. You can only stop them if you kill the apex researcher, but if a miniknog soldier brings your health down to one pip the screen goes black. Then a few second long cinematic plays showing to black figures dragging a floran/hytol/human/apex/glitch(maybe)/novakid(game release) away. The screen then shows a figure that looks like the player in a experimentation vat, you have to rapidly press e to smash the glass and make your way up to the Apex Research and kill him (well you would be dumb not to as if you escape without killing the researcher the raids will continue).
These are REALLY cool ideas, and I love them. Make it happen, a huge problem with games is that once you've got everything you're invincible. I want to be scared and hide in my ship like a little kitten
Most certainly not the last one. A vast majority of players would not enjoy, after killing a random cultist or person on some planet, having everything they've done erased and removed without a clue as to why it's happening or a method of stopping it before most of your stuff is gone.
